


I Never Felt so Much Life

by dyllpickless



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Dave Katz is a Softie, Drug Abuse, Ghosts, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other, Overdose, Time Travel, Vietnam War, and a dumbass, cause of the
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23499508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyllpickless/pseuds/dyllpickless
Summary: "You weren't there! I needed you!"---Dave stops talking to Klaus. It doesn't go well.
Relationships: Dave & Klaus Hargreeves, Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 14
Kudos: 206





	I Never Felt so Much Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic request from @princejoopie!

Klaus was utterly and completely lost. One night he went to bed and everything was fine, but when he woke up the next morning, it was all ruined. Dave stopped talking to Klaus. He stopped looking over at him when something funny happened, he stopped doing whatever he could to make Klaus laugh when he couldn’t even muster up a smile, he stopped grabbing onto the back of Klaus’ vest or diving into a conversation or poking Klaus in the side to keep him out of trouble. 

He just… stopped. And Klaus felt more confused and scared and blindsided than when he fell into this fucking hellhole. 

He wasn’t the only one who noticed it. After digging foxholes for the larger part of the morning, France wandered over to Klaus, sat down, opened up his can of C-Rations, and turned to him. 

“So,” he started, his mouth already full of what shouldn’t be called food, “what’s up with you and Katz?”

Before Klaus could answer, Speck—France’s best friend, his muscle, his no-homo other half—joined the group. “What happened to Dave?”

Klaus looked down at his own food, suddenly not feeling as close to starvation as he did while they were still digging. He wiped his muddy hands on his already dirty pants and sighed. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what happened. One day we were good, and the next… I don’t know.” He gritted his teeth and willed the tears in his eyes to go away, glaring harshly at the ground.

France sighed and laid a small hand on Klaus’ back. Klaus was already becoming so lost in himself that he barely felt it. Ghosts wailed at the edges of their camp, creeping ever closer. He should get more drugs. If Dave wasn’t there to help, then why not? It was Dave that looked sad when Klaus popped pills. It was Dave that tried to help distract him (from what, he didn’t know, and for the foreseeable future, it was going to stay that way). It was Dave that talked him through everything. Without Dave, Klaus didn’t have that small, nagging feeling every time he did something. He didn’t have to worry about anybody but himself, just like old times. Good.

It didn’t feel good.

* * *

No matter what Klaus did, Dave wouldn’t even so much as glance at him. Klaus tried everything: fake laughing at a joke, slipping and falling in the mud, “accidentally” snapping a shovel in half. Nothing. When Klaus tried to sit next to him during dinner, Dave just wordlessly got up and moved to the other side of the group.

The ghosts were getting worse. It was like Dave had been some kind of protection before, warding off the worst of the spirits. They noticed Dave’s absence, and they took advantage of it. They got closer than ever before, boxing Klaus in against the wall of the officer’s tent, or screaming in his face during a quiet moment, or moving to punch him and stopping a millimeter away from Klaus’ face.

The others thought they had gotten used to Klaus’ jumpiness. They were wrong. 

That night, the ghosts cut through everything Klaus took. The most the drugs did was slightly muffle them. There were just too many. Klaus pressed his palms to his ears after lights out and stared straight ahead, figuring looking at the ceiling of the tent was a safer bet than glancing to his right—Dave’s direction. At least that way, the silent tears would be a little less noticeable. 

A little girl was at the foot of his bed. Or, what was left of her. The napalm still ate away at her skin. Blood still gurgled in her screams. She still pulled at what was left of her clothing and begged for it all to go away. Klaus whispered similar pleas under his breath.

“At least now you won’t have to worry about Katz.”

_ No. _

Klaus couldn’t muffle the sob that left his mouth. Rizzo, a ghost of a man who was shot in the head before Klaus arrived, whose apparent unfinished business was to follow Klaus around and taunt him and tell him not to get too close to Dave, or else they’d get court-martialed or just plain shot. Klaus wasn’t even sure if Dave was gay, but every time it was mentioned he felt like throwing up. Of  _ course _ he’d shown up to gloat. 

“Maybe he figured it out.”

_ Stop it. _

“Maybe he realized what was going on, and he decided to ditch you before he bought it.”

Klaus shot to his feet. He couldn’t deal with this. He needed more.

He knew just where to get what he needed. Sometimes, when things were really bad, Klaus would break into the med tent and get everything himself, instead of going through the medic. His training as a kid was good for one thing: now he knew how to pick locks. 

A few agonizing minutes later, Klaus was washing down pill after pill with a bottle of nice whiskey, which the medic had kept hidden behind the file cabinet for especially bad field operations. He didn’t even look at what he grabbed, he just poured a little bit of everything into his hand, downed that, rinse, and repeat. The rhythm was soothing, almost as hypnotizing as the drugs. Klaus lost himself in it, and soon the ghosts started to fade away like somebody was turning the dial on an old-ass state-of-the-art radio. All he had to do was take more pills and drink more whiskey, and so he did. And the world started fading faster and faster, until everything fell away into pitch-black darkness.

* * *

Everything hurt. Klaus screwed his eyes shut and let out a soft groan of pain. In an instant, there was a hand on his shoulder. His eyes flew open and he flinched away.

Dave. Dave was sitting by his cot. Dave placed his hand back on Klaus’ shoulder.  _ Dave. _ Klaus didn’t know whether to sing or cry.

Klaus relaxed, but frowned up at him. He looked about as bad as Klaus felt. “What—” His voice creaked like an M60 that needed to be oiled, so he licked his lips before trying again. “What happened?”

Dave’s face screwed up. “What do you mean ‘what happened?’”

“Well, you look—”

“Klaus, you fucking overdosed. You don’t get to ask that question.”

_ Oh. _

Dave’s voice was thick, his face was swollen, his eyes were red and bloodshot—he’d been crying. A lot. He looked like he’d been through hell. Klaus could only remember one other time he’d seen Dave like this, and it wasn’t pretty then, either.

* * *

_ “You can’t just do that!” _

_ “Do what? I’m fine!” _

_ “Klaus, we thought you died.” _

_ He did die, but he wasn’t going to just come right out and say it. Instead, he took a moment to really look at Dave. He’d clearly been crying just before Klaus walked in. His eyes were all red and watery. His curls were in a disarray, like he’d been tugging at them. His skin was pink from him scratching at it.  _

_ Klaus frowned. He felt  _ bad. _ Like really, honestly, truly bad. What justification he had prepared for wandering off into the forest disappeared the moment he saw that broken look on Dave’s face. He’d really, truly hurt him. _

_ “I’m sorry,” Klaus found himself saying, a phrase that hadn’t honestly left his lips in recent history. _

_ He wasn’t sure which person initiated it, but the next moment, they were wrapped up in each other’s arms. They held on for dear life, enveloped in and surrounded by the other. The rest of the world was gone. In that moment, all of the worry and fear and trepidation were gone. It was just the two of them and the relief they felt as they held each other. _

_ Neither one knew it, but they both had the same thing on their minds: how they longed to have this closeness more, and how they wished the other felt the same way. _

* * *

“I just don’t fucking get it.”

Klaus frowned and shook his head slightly. That moment of remorse was shattered by incredulous anger. “What?”

“Why? Why this, of all things?”

A series of half-syllables spilled out of Klaus’ mouth before he finally found a proper response. “You weren’t there!” He shouted, ignoring how it made his head pound. “I needed you, and you fucking abandoned me!”

“I was right there. You could have come to me at any time,” Dave replied, refusing to raise his voice. No matter what happened, he’d never raised his voice at Klaus. He’d seen him flinch too many times because of the others to cause that, even when Klaus didn’t return the favor. He could take it. Klaus couldn’t. That didn’t make him any less mad, though.

“No, you fucking weren’t,” Klaus shot back. “You wouldn’t even  _ look _ at me.”

Dave fell silent. His grip on Klaus’ shoulder went lax, so it was just resting there, not holding onto anything. Klaus watched him with a quiet, sick, poisonous sort of horror, scared he’d pushed too far. Scared Dave would get up and walk out, just like every other living person who he so much as tried to get close to.

When the stretch of silence got too long, Klaus spoke up again. “Dave, I’m sorr—”

“No,” Dave stated firmly. “No, I’m the one that’s sorry. That was… more than stupid. That was horrible and cruel and I’m  _ never _ going to do that again. I’m so sorry.”

Klaus looked up at him in shock. Shocked not only at Dave’s apology, but also (moreso?) at himself. Klaus believed him. He trusted him. He lov—

_ Ah, shit. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @princejoopie and @totallyevan for reading this beforehand! I love you guys <3


End file.
